Month: March 2009

Many people shared my fondness for pigs, until they realized I wasn’t talking about food, at which point they screamed, “Ewww… how could you possibly want to get near such a dumb, dirty and disease-ridden creature? What’s wrong with you,” while covering their nose as if I’d turned into an odorous animal myself.

Well, not if you keep them clean. I’m not talking about farm pigs. Unwashed, everything is dirty: cats, dogs, kids. Pigs are not stupid too. They are thought to have intelligence comparable to that of a 3-year old human child. No offence, but a pet pig can be cleaner and is probably smarter than your infant, while being equally lovely.

I bet most people will find their heart warmed when they see the smile of a pig (yes they do smile), except of course these humanoid monsters in South Korea.

It all started with an article I read in Reader’s Digest. It told the story of a pig living with a family in a farm, a pig which “watched TV with the boy while sitting on the couch and gobbling up ice-cream”. I’ve wanted a pet pig ever since.

When the pig died of heart disease (too much ice-cream perhaps?), the boy put it this way: “Its heart was filled with so much love that it bursted.”

That brings me to one important reason that has prevented me from having a pet. You see having a shorter lifespan a pet inevitably dies before we do. I must admit I want to avoid having to confront the sadness and grief that come with its departure.

Much has been written about the bizarre English names that some Hong Kong people have chosen, but yesterday I came across a Pizza Hut waiter whose first name almost made the likes of Yuki, Strawberry and Happy seem perfectly normal.

“FAIL fast, fail early” is a management mantra in many industries. Identify the projects that will not pay off quickly, and the costs of failure are capped. Banks have developed their own version of this rule—“fail completely, fail catastrophically”—but one of the earliest victims of the crisis may yet be among the first to recover.

… Under the temporary grip of an evil spell in 2003 they bought Household, an American consumer-credit firm that then haemorrhaged losses. On March 2nd they snapped out of it. HSBC’s chairman acknowledged that it was “an acquisition we wish we had not undertaken”, wrote off its cost and promised to run down its book of dodgy loans. Having opened its heart, HSBC felt able to lower its dividend and raise its core tier-one capital ratio to 8.5%, above those of JPMorgan Chase (6.4%) and Santander (7.2%), two more of the Western world’s biggest banks also vying for the title of the safest one.

這裏說，素來以穩健見稱的大笨象，當年決定買Household是「under the temporary grip of an evil spell」，即中了魔咒是也。在廣東話裏，糊裡糊塗、不知怎地做了錯誤的決定，叫作「鬼上身」，傳神之極，想不到英語也有類似講法。開卷有益，又得一寶，以後翻譯可派上用場。